Dancing in the Moonlight (36 page)

Pulling herself together, Lucy said weakly, ‘Won’t – won’t you come in?’

‘No, I’ll not come in.’ This was said in the tone of ‘I’ll never set foot over
your
doorstep’ and made Dolly’s opinion of the proceedings
abundantly clear, even before she continued, ‘We got a telegram from Jacob an hour ago, saying he was back in barracks in England, but he can’t get immediate leave. He said he’d
be writing to you, but wanted me to let you know he was safe.’

Lucy looked from Dolly to Abe, sitting so stiff and silent in the cart, and then back to Dolly again. These two people had been like a mother and father to Jacob for most of his life and she
knew he thought the world of them. But they didn’t like her.

For a moment she had an overwhelming desire to tell them she wasn’t the person they thought her to be, but of course that was impossible. Instead she drew herself up with a natural dignity
that wasn’t lost on the blacksmith’s wife, her voice matching her posture when she said, ‘Thank you very much for coming to see me, Mrs Williamson. It was kind of you.’

‘Aye, well, like I said, Jacob asked us.’ Dolly was flustered now and it showed. She looked as though she was about to say something more and then thought better of it, turning and
scrambling up beside her husband before he could get down to assist her.

Lucy didn’t shut the door until the horse had begun to amble off, taking its time in spite of its master’s ‘Come on, lass, gee up!’ And then she closed it slowly, turning
to lean against it.

For a minute, when she had first seen them and their faces so grim, she had thought . . . She shut her eyes against what she had thought.

But he was alive.

Of course there was still Tom, and she could never tell Jacob the truth about Daisy, and they could never be together; nothing had changed, not really, but he was alive.

PART SIX

Lucy received Jacob’s letter a few days later and from the first word she was aware that the tone had changed. Before, his letters had been friendly, warm and chatty,
starting with ‘Dear Lucy’ and finishing ‘Your loving friend, Jacob’. This one began, ‘My dearest Lucy’ and there was no making light of the war, as in his
previous correspondence. Instead, he poured out the agony and loss and heartache of what he had seen, his grief at the friends he had lost, the fear he’d had that he would never return home
and see her again. This was the Jacob who had asked her to be his lass so many years ago.

She read the letter twice, her hand touching the silver heart she had taken to wearing again, hidden under the high collars of the dresses she favoured.

This time . . . this time he had written a love letter and, if she’d needed further proof, he had ended with, ‘All my love, Jacob’.

She pressed the letter to her bosom, shutting her eyes as a hundred emotions tumbled one after the other through her body, causing her to tremble. This was exactly what she had feared after he
had kissed her and she’d had time to reflect on the foolishness of what she’d done, but then his letters had begun to arrive and their easy, friendly style had reassured her that she
hadn’t led him on. Hadn’t put him in danger from an enemy who was far more cunning and dangerous than the Germans – an enemy she couldn’t even warn him existed. How could
she tell him his own brother had killed Perce, and had probably been responsible for the attack on him when he was fifteen years old? That Tom had forced himself upon her, and Daisy was the result?
And that he had continued to hound her ever since?

She couldn’t. She opened her eyes, reading the letter again and touching the words he’d written, as though in doing so she could touch him. What was she going to do?

She spent the next few days in a torment of indecision and eventually wrote back along the lines she would pen to John – to a brother. She couldn’t stop writing to Jacob now, it
would be too cruel, and this way maybe she could say enough to let him know how things stood, without actually
saying
anything? Unsatisfactory though that was, it would have to do.

His next letter came on the Monday, after a scary weekend when the first bombs dropped on Sunderland just after midnight on a fine summer’s night towards the end of June. The sirens had
sounded half an hour before, sending Lucy and the others running to the Anderson shelter, shocked and disorientated after being woken so abruptly. They found out the next day that no one had been
killed, although a centuries-old tithe barn had been demolished in Whitburn, killing a horse stabled there, and another of the bombs had narrowly missed the Fishermen’s Cottages at The Bents.
Suddenly the war had become very near, and with the French now under German occupation, everyone was frighteningly aware that the British had been left to fight the Nazis alone. The petty
restrictions of the blackout and rationing, and the authoritarian attitude of the air-raid wardens, which had got up the nose of many a northerner, became unimportant overnight.

Jacob’s letter was waiting for Lucy when she got home from work. It had been a long day and she was tired, and she noticed as soon as she entered the house that Donald was having a bad
day. The inoperable cancer that had spread from his stomach to his kidneys had begun to take over his liver too, if the yellow tinge to his emaciated flesh was anything to go by. The doctor who had
been treating him in the London hospital prior to his arrival in Sunderland had estimated that he had three, maybe four months left. That had been a day or two before he had come home in the middle
of May. Looking at him today as he met her in the hall, she thought the doctor’s prognosis had been optimistic.

‘Looks like Jacob’s written again,’ said Donald, handing her the envelope with Jacob’s distinctive black scrawly writing. ‘Are you sure you two are just
friends?’

‘Quite sure.’ Lucy took the envelope and stuffed it in her pocket. ‘I’ll go and change and then we’ll have a cup of tea in the garden before dinner.’

Donald stood staring after her long after she had disappeared up the stairs. Friends, be blowed. She’d been all of a lather the last time Jacob had written and he’d remembered the
way things had been between those two when they were young. Thick as thieves, they’d been. Something had happened between them, and he suspected Jacob was the reason Lucy had cut the Crawford
family out of her life. Had he let her down in some way? Hurt her? Whatever he’d done, she still loved him, or his name wasn’t Donald Fallow.

The grinding-hot ache in his stomach flared into one of the explosions of pain that were becoming harder to bear, and he doubled over for a moment or two before straightening and slowly making
his way into the sitting room and through to the garden. He took one of the pills from the bottle in his pocket that the doctor in London had given him and swallowed it without water.

It was a gorgeous evening, mellow and warm after a hot day, a few fleecy clouds in the bluest of blue skies. Some were saying that the beautiful summer with its clear high skies and dry weather
would make things easier for the German bombers, and that might be the case, but he couldn’t help feeling a secret satisfaction that his last summer was England at its best. He sat absolutely
still and, as the pain settled down to the familiar gnawing ache, gradually relaxed.

Ridiculous, when he was dying, he thought, but he was happier now than he’d been for years. Since he had left Sunderland in fact. He’d found work easy enough down south, but had
poured every penny he’d earned down his throat, drinking himself into oblivion each night so that he could sleep. Without the drink, the screaming nightmares had come: his father and Ernie
appearing the way they’d been that last night, smashed and bleeding, their open mouths bubbling blood as they’d tried to drag him down with them under the dank, black water of the
docks. He’d known they were reproaching him for walking out on Lucy and the bairns, that they were telling him to go back, but he’d been more scared of Tom Crawford than of any ghosts
that haunted his mind. And so he’d worked all day and drunk himself senseless every night, telling himself it would get better in time. But it never had. Not until the moment he had seen Lucy
again and she’d given him absolution.

‘Donald?’ He opened his eyes to find Lucy standing in front of him and he took the cup of tea she was holding out as she said, ‘You should see a doctor.’

‘I did. In London.’

‘Here, I mean.’

‘I’ve told you, lass, there’s nowt they can do. When I run out of my pills I’ll see a quack about getting some more, but for now I’m all right.’ He looked
intently at her as she sat down beside him. ‘How’s Jacob?’

She’d been about to drink and he saw her pause for an infinitesimal moment. Then she put the cup to her lips and took a sip. ‘Jacob?’ It was said with studied casualness.
‘He was writing to say he’s coming home on leave.’

‘Oh aye? That’s nice. You’ll be seeing him then?’

She took another sip of tea. ‘I’m not sure if that’s a good idea. I’m not sure if agreeing to write to him was a good idea either, to be honest.’

She was putting on a good act, but she was all of a lather again. ‘Why is that then?’ Donald asked quietly.

She shrugged. ‘The childhood thing, us living in Zetland Street – everything – is in the past now. We’re different people, but I’m not sure if Jacob sees that. I
don’t want to bring the past into this new life that I’ve built for myself, and Jacob is part of the past.’

It was too pat. As though she had rehearsed it. ‘That’s a bit harsh, lass, isn’t it?’ he said mildly. ‘Me an’ Ruby an’ the rest of us are part of that
past, too.’

‘That’s different. You’re family.’

He was silent for a moment. ‘What is it, lass? What’s really bothering you?’

She shot him a quick glance before looking down at her cup. ‘I’ve told you.’

‘I don’t think you have. There’s something eating away at you and you’re as jumpy as a kitten. You never used to be like that.’

‘I had to change. I had a family to take care of.’ And then she quickly put out her hand and touched his, adding, ‘I don’t mean anything by that, I’m not blaming
you or anything.’ She took a deep breath. ‘I built up Perce’s business with blood, sweat and tears, Donald. There were days, weeks, when I barely saw Daisy when she was little. It
wasn’t what I wanted, but it was necessary if we were going to be secure in the future. Financially secure. I saw my chance and I took it, and I don’t regret it. If you’re poor
and unprotected, people think they can do whatever they like, treat you however they like and get away with it, and mostly they do.’

He stared at her troubled profile, trying to understand. ‘What has that got to do with seeing Jacob?’

Her smile seemed forced. ‘Nothing. I’m wandering. Take no notice. Look, I’m going to hurry Bess and Flora up with the dinner; it’s always late when it’s their turn
to cook. I’ll call you when it’s ready.’

Donald finished his tea and settled back in his deckchair, shutting his eyes, but although he appeared to be dozing in the warm evening sunshine, his mind was worrying at what Lucy had said,
like a dog with a bone. There was more than met the eye here, but he was blowed if he could get a handle on it. The talk about Jacob belonging to the past was so much codswallop. He had asked Ruby
the other day if she knew what was eating Lucy, and she’d replied airily – too airily now, when he thought about it – that Lucy was absolutely fine, but pressured with running the
four shops and being involved in one or two committees in the town and caring for the family. ‘But she likes to keep busy,’ she had qualified in the next breath. ‘That’s the
sort of woman she is now.’

He’d tackle Ruby again. Donald mentally nodded at the thought. He’d pick his moment and grill her until he was satisfied, but without Lucy around. He wasn’t prying for
prying’s sake, but in the years since he had left something had happened to Lucy, he was sure of it. Something he might have been able to help with, or even prevent, if he had stayed around.
He felt responsible, rightly or wrongly. And one thing was for sure: for however long he had left, Lucy and the others were his priority. He wouldn’t let her down a second time.

Lucy slept badly that night, in spite of there being no sirens cutting into the quiet and sending everyone scurrying for the shelter. Jacob’s letter was folded away with
the others in an old chocolate box tied with a ribbon, which resided on the top of the wardrobe, but she didn’t have to look at it to remember every word, which ran over and over in her mind
every time she stirred:

She awoke before it was light and sat at her open window with the scent of climbing roses perfuming the lazy, warm air. Every nerve in her body was sensitized and her head
throbbed and her heart ached, but she knew what she had to do. He would come soon. If not today, then tomorrow or the next day. No more wild imagining that somehow things would come right and they
could be together. No more wishing Tom Crawford dead, willing one of Hitler’s bombs to land on him and blow him to smithereens, or a car or lorry to run over him in the blackout or –
oh, a hundred scenarios she’d thought up since she had seen Jacob again and wanted what she couldn’t have. Tom Crawford would live forever. In a world where the innocent were bombed and
tortured and maimed, how could she hope for anything different? There was no room for hope or flights of fancy now. The bad were always stronger than the good because their consciences didn’t
trouble them. Tom would kill Jacob without a second thought, to prevent them being together. Ruby was right: in refusing him she had let loose a monster; he couldn’t bear the thought of
someone else having what he had been denied. There was no love involved, merely an egomaniacal obsession that would stop at nothing. It was the same kind of evil that had plunged the world into
this war.